


Out of Bounds

by hypernomad



Series: Character Studies [1]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-18 02:04:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1410907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypernomad/pseuds/hypernomad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mickey knows there's a difference between being afraid of what something is, and being afraid of what it means.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of Bounds

**Author's Note:**

> Mickey-centric study fic. Heavy (mostly non-graphic) mentions of abuse and homophobia, brief description of anxiety attacks.

The best Christmas Mickey ever has is when he’s eleven years old and the state of Illinois finally finds the sense to lock his father up for a few years. It’s only temporary, but five years without that prick throwing his weight around and drinking all the rent money is about as good as it’s going to get for Mickey right now.

Christmas is a weird affair that year; being Milkoviches, they seldom even have the money to pay the bills so there’s never a huge family gathering or exchanging of gifts. It’s not the first time Terry’s been in jail but surprisingly it’s the longest sentence he’s had since before Mickey was born and nobody’s quite sure how to handle it. But with their father’s sentencing coming just two weeks before the big day, there’s an uneasy air in their cold, damp house: nobody feels safe or sure enough to be happy and risk being accused of disloyalty or to feign sadness and risk a fist in the face for being a pussy about it. Needless to say, the house is pretty empty that year. Iggy’s already on his first stint in juvie (thirteen years old and setting fire to a car – a late start for a Milkovich, but at least he started with a bang) and Joey spends most of his time at his new girlfriend’s place. Mickey thinks she’ll be pregnant by Easter. Fuck knows where his other brothers have got to; a big part of him doesn’t really want to find out.

Mickey knows exactly how he feels about it that Christmas, however – he’s just not stupid enough to show it. He and Mandy spend Christmas playing GTA III and Tekken 4 on the crappy PS2 Joey stole from his girlfriend’s brother, pausing every few minutes for one of them to slap it in annoyance or turn it on its side to get it to work right. Their skinny ten and eleven year old bodies work against them and they get completely wasted in no time on a six pack of beer. They stuff their faces with Pringles and donuts when Mandy gets the munchies from the weed Mickey found in his dad’s room.

On New Year’s, there’s a crowd of people from the neighbourhood getting hammered and setting off fireworks around a bonfire on the vacant lot on the corner of his street and Mickey’s never felt more like partying in his life. Mandy’s already there with her friends when he arrives – a gaggle of skanky girls he doesn’t find remotely interesting, and when one of them – a fake-tanned blonde girl who looks no older than twelve or so dressed in her older sister’s clothes and wearing so much mascara Mickey’s not sure how she can still open her eyes – brushes up against him and slides an arm around him to grab his ass, he feels absolutely nothing but annoyance. He makes an irritated grunt and tells her to piss off before he finds his way over to where Joey’s getting drunk with a bunch of his friends and yelling about how hard he finger-banged his girlfriend the other night. Mickey loiters on the edge of the throng of boys, listening intently to his brother’s every word and checks a couple of them out without realising it. They’re older than him, fifteen or sixteen years old and not a single one of them still in school, but they’re tall and stubbly and the deep vibration of their voices as they laugh at his brother’s obscene story plants a spark in him he’s never felt before.

He’s never been more terrified than he is when he realises just how much he’d like one of them to touch him like the blonde girl did.

That year, spring brings with it not only his twelfth birthday, but a tidal wave of hormones as well. The sex ed movie they’d been made to watch that year wasn’t fucking lying about sex drive spikes: all Mickey can think about is dick. Morning, noon and night, there’s little else on his mind. He doesn’t think there’s anything hotter in the whole world than the idea of some guy pounding into him from behind, or on his back, or standing up, or where-the-fuck-ever (short of it actually happening for real, of course). He understands very quickly and with a mix utter horror and excitement that he has no interest in his dick going anywhere near some girl's thing. Nope, he’s for the boys, that’s for certain.

Obviously, Mickey’s newly-raging hormones do little to quell his vicious survival instinct and he keeps very, very quiet about his business. He only jerks off when his asshole brothers aren’t throwing a party or in the other room getting stoned with their friends and Mandy isn’t locking herself in the bathroom next door for hours at a time for reasons unknown. (Seriously, girls are a fucking mystery.)

Nonetheless, he does find occasional moments of respite. So when Mandy goes over to her friend’s house for a party and his brothers are all god-knows-where, Mickey finds himself in his sister’s room and rooting under her bed. He knows she’s got some stashed in there somewhere; they sure as shit don’t have the money for a computer or an internet bill on top of all the others they can’t afford, so it’s good old fashioned porno mags in this house. After rooting around under her bed for a few minutes, his hand brushes over something smooth and glossy and he grabs it, pulling it out and grinning triumphantly at the image of a ripped surfer dude on the cover – not really Mickey’s type, but it’ll do. He rolls it up and scurries back to his room (even though his house is empty) and slams the door shut behind him.

Annoyingly, it’s not a gay porn mag, but there are pictures of naked dudes in it and luckily that’s enough to get Mickey and his hormones going. He’s staring intently at a picture of a redhead with lean muscles and is well on his way to orgasm when he suddenly hears the front door slam and a pair of his brothers go barrelling into the living room. He hisses out a curse and crams the magazine down the side of his bed, cleaning up hastily and wiping the sweat from his forehead as he buries himself beneath the thin blanket, pretending to be asleep. Almost as soon he’s beneath the covers, Tony is barging through his room and into the bathroom to take a piss, and after a few minutes of shuffling around and the sound of the toilet flushing, he’s stomping back out again into the living room.

Mickey sighs and listens intently, wondering why they’ve come back all of a sudden. He soon wishes he hadn’t.

“Man, I ain’t had that much fun queerbashin’ in a long time,” Tony says as he walks back into the living room.

Mickey recognises Jamie’s gross snigger instantly. “Me neither. ‘Wish dad wasn’t in jail. He’d a’loved that.” 

“D’you think he’s still there?” Tony asks. He’s in the kitchen now.

“Who dad? Of course he is, you retard.”

“Not fuckin’ dad. That faggot in Washington Park.”

“I hope so,” Jamie says, almost inaudibly, and it sounds like he’s sealing a rolled-up joint.

“Do you think he’ll walk again?” Tony says around a mouthful of potato chips. Shitheads never could help themselves from eating all the fucking food before anybody else even gets a chance to look at it.

“I hope not.” Jamie says, and Mickey feels sick at the sound of the grin in his voice.

“Guess he’ll have to take it up the ass layin’ down now. No more doggy style for him.” Tony laughs.

“Gross, dude. I don’t wanna fuckin’ hear about that.” Jamie says, but Mickey swears he can hear a cruel little laugh at the suggestion in his voice.

A month or so later and Mandy and her skanky friends are sitting out on the front porch, sharing a joint and soaking up the last of the late summer sunshine. It’s starting to get a little cool now and Mickey loiters indecisively in the living room for a few minutes to listen to their inane conversation through the half-open door about how especially shitty school is this year and which teachers were trying to bang them already.

When he hears Mandy and one of the girls get up and begin arguing with a pair of girls across the street (who they can’t understand anyway because they yell back in Spanish, but it doesn’t stop them), he makes his move. When he steps out, the blonde girl he rejected on New Years’ is the only one still on the porch. Mickey steps out and grabs the joint from the blonde girl’s lips, putting it between his own and then walking back in the house. She makes an undignified noise, but once she turns and sees that it’s Mickey, her painted lips stretch into a crooked smile and her eyelashes bat in a way that Mickey assumes is meant to be charming. He squashes the twist of disgust in his stomach and does his best to wink back at her invitingly before walking back in the house.

It takes all of about thirty seconds for her to follow him inside, and when she leaves again fifteen minutes later looking very self-satisfied and flicking her hair confidently, it’s like someone’s been holding a knife over Mickey’s stomach for months and now they’ve finally driven it in.

At fourteen, he’s cursing the absence of the growth spurt he should’ve had by now as he stands on the balls of his feet and reaches up to the top shelf in some random-ass convenience store that opened up in the neighbourhood a few years back. He’s grown bored of stealing Mandy’s porno mags and seeing the same fucking faces staring at him over and over again (though he does tear out his redhead before he shoves it back under Mandy’s bed for the umpteenth and last time, just because he liked him that much. He folds him up neatly and tucks him underneath the large snake figurine on the shelf behind his bed). He grabs one called _Macho_ and takes a few moments to flick through the glossy images of men in a number of obscene positions before quickly glancing over at the dark haired guy on the checkout who’s fretting and arguing with some iron-haired old hag. When the cashier looks away, Mickey rolls it up and shoves it down the back of his jeans. He begins walking to the door just as a woman with a scarf around her head bulldozes her way onto the floor and Mickey’s thinking twice before he grabs that box of cupcakes on his way out for dinner. He does it anyway when she turns her back to him to scream at her husband and Mickey’s gone into the cold air of November dusk.

When he gets home, Mandy’s out somewhere and Joey nearly knocks him flying as he barges past him through the front door, arguing and swearing at someone on the phone before Mickey even gets a chance to ask him if anyone else is home or where he’s going. When he steps inside, the house is actually warm for once and there’s an episode of Beavis and Butthead on the TV. He thinks about sitting and watching for a minute because _come on,_ he loves Beavis and Butthead, but he reasons that he has something much better to do. Shrugging, he walks into his bedroom, kicks his shoes off and lets his coat drop from his shoulders. He drops the cupcakes on his couch then pulls the magazine out from the back of his jeans.

Turning it over in his hands a few times, Mickey sighs and slides it under his pillow while he pulls his stained black skull t-shirt off over his head and tosses it into the corner. He unravels the huge belt he swiped from his brother’s room from around his waist, struggling and cursing to himself to get the tongue to wiggle free of the new hole he had to make to get it to fit around his skinny hips. When he finally gets it undone, his jeans slide off of his hips easily to pool around his ankles and Mickey steps free of them with a sigh. He really needs to get some new fucking clothes. He tosses off his underwear and socks as he makes his way into the bathroom to take a shower. 

A few days previously he and Mandy hit the nearest Target in need of some basics they know they’re not going to be able to afford for a few weeks. Mandy even wore what she now refers to as her “thieving coat” thanks to its many pockets and zips. Of course, security’s always stepped up for the holiday season, so they ended up running out of there from security and laughing their asses off all the way home.

Mickey had made off with a few tubs of hair gel, some underwear and socks (since his entire collection have holes in them now) and a notebook to doodle on, but he hadn’t had the time to grab much else. The only other thing he had managed to get hold of was a hairbrush – which, strangely, was actually intentional. He wasn’t using it on his hair though.

He’d stood in the middle of the store and, feeling embarrassed and awkward as fuck, had looked for the one with the biggest and most, well, comfortable-looking handle he could find. He’d felt like the biggest moron ever wandering the halls looking for something suitably shaped and sized to shove up his ass. Regardless, he’d found one just as Mandy ran yelling and laughing from security past the aisle he was in and shoved it into his coat pocket to join her in her little evening run.

It’s not like he’s pleased about having to use a fucking hairbrush handle, but he’d been kicked out of the three different sex shops he’d walked into without even getting the chance to pocket anything, and he’s basically run out of options. It’s hardly a _need_ , true, but he has to see if it’s really as great as he thinks it is. He uses his fingers more or less every time he does this, and it feels great – but he knows that a dick is going to feel different and he really can’t wait to find out just how much.

He stands in front of his bed with a towel around his waist now and stares at the offending object for a few moments before he drops the towel, gets comfortable in his bed, and begins flicking through the slightly curled up magazine on his mattress. He’s twenty minutes in and has just got the whole handle of the thing in his ass when he shifts on the bed and makes the handle knock against something deep inside him. It has him biting his hand and stifling a yelp, breathing heavily through his nose and squeezing his eyes shut. _That_ had certainly never happened before. He does it again a few times and is close to the edge when someone pushes his door open and walks in.

Mickey jerks his head over to the door with a mortified expression on his face at the person who’s just walked in. He doesn't recognise him and it’s obvious what he’s just been doing, so he decides that the best defence is offence and yells at him to get out.  

“Hey, easy, easy!” The guy says. “Your brother said I could use the bathroom. It’s through there, right?”

Mickey looks terrified. “Joey? Where is he?” He asks. He hates how his fucking stupid voice cracks as he says it and he suddenly sounds like a fucking kid again.

“He’s gone to collect payment for some pills he sold last week. The guy hasn’t paid him back yet so he’s probably gonna be a while.” The guy is skinny, six feet tall and probably about seventeen or so. He’s got one of those rumbles in his voice that set this whole sorry show in motion, at that New Years’ Party all that time ago. He’s pale and he has a long face; it’s not unattractive, but his chin is square, his nose is Roman and his eyes are blue, and there’s a little mess of loose, lemon coloured curls peeking out from his grey beanie and resting against his pallid, freckly forehead.

“Okay… are you gonna go take a piss then or are you just keep staring at me?” He asks, feeling a little weird about how the guy’s just been standing against his closed bedroom door for a few minutes now while Mickey’s laying there with a hairbrush handle still lodged in his ass.

A smirk spreads on Blondie’s face and then he’s speaking again, this time with much more hushed tones. “We got a few minutes, right?” He says, and slides off his jacket.

Mickey might be inexperienced, but he knows an invitation when he gets one and he’s sure as shit not about to pass up the opportunity for the real thing. A part of him wonders whether this guy’s just fucking with him, but Mickey’s got a gun in his bedside drawer and he’s pretty sure that this pussy’s not going to be laughing when it makes an appearance.

So they fuck, and it’s painful at first, and it doesn’t last all that long because he’s fourteen years old and he’s gay and his family's violently homophobic and he's alone with it and it’s the first time he’s being touched in a way that doesn’t make him feel sick to his stomach with fear or disgust.

Instead, he squeezes his eyes shut against the pillow in either shame or fear or grief – he’s past knowing the difference now. It all blends together like paint; a messy watercolour in his mind and in his balls and his stomach as the pressure builds and finally spreads outwards. It expels it all like a drag on a cigarette; relief that’s there all at once and then suddenly it’s waning, only to wax into fullness all over again. When it’s over, he feels like he’s just committed an awful crime that’s going to send him to the gallows. So he tells himself that it’s just this once, that it’s not going to happen again, and that Blondie isn’t going to say a damn thing.

Eventually, he’s got half a dozen Last Times under his belt and sometimes there’s not even an encounter with another boy or man to speak of; just the burning, crushing need that turns him inside out.

He runs out of time to fix it, eventually; to stop feeling like this about men and to stop needing it like he does, and there’s a growing, nagging part of him that’s telling him that that isn't how this goes. His dad’s released from jail not long after Iggy’s let out of juvie, and there’s a party at his house to celebrate – not that any of them really feel there’s anything to celebrate of course, except maybe Iggy’s return. As much as they’ve fought in the past, five years is a long time not to see his brother at all.

When he first sees Ian Gallagher again, it’s like an alarm goes off somewhere and he can’t find the fucking snooze button. He remembers seeing him around school a few times and at Little League a few years back, but he’d been freckly and curly and his face had been rounder with baby-fat back then, and Mickey hadn’t taken much notice. But here he is now, tall and freckled and ginger and there’s a fire growing in Mickey’s belly already that’s not entirely from chasing him through the Kash n’ Grab.

He can tell he’s gay, of course. He heard that ‘rumour’ about him fucking Roger ‘donkey-dick’ Spikey and as far as he knows, he’s never had a girlfriend. The thing with Mandy doesn’t count; it’s obviously bullshit. Or at least, it better be, because he really doesn’t feel like having to hunt him down to kick his ass all over again for stringing his sister along when he’s so obviously boning his boss – that pathetic owner of the Kash n’ Grab he’s stolen from god-knows how many times before.

Instead, he sets about getting Ian in his bed using his tried-and-tested attention seeking tactic: being a royal pain in the ass and stealing from the store whenever Firecrotch has a shift. He’d thought it’d be easier than this, truth be told; most people who know Mickey (or any of the Milkoviches, for that matter) know that if he hates you, you’re going to fucking know about it. Mickey Milkovich doesn’t fuck around.

A week or so of this and he’s more or less got Ian’s work schedule memorised, but he fucks up a few times and goes in when it’s just Kash on the register and Ian’s nowhere to be found. He thinks Gallagher might get a bit more pissed off if he knocks his boyfriend around a little, so he does just that when he steals the gun right from the pathetic little asshole’s hands.

It’s just his fucking luck that Ian would finally get the hint and waltz into his room with his fucking tyre iron when his white-supremacist homophobic piece of shit father is sound asleep in the next room. But Mickey’s never been the type to pass up an opportunity, so when they’re sufficiently hot from the fighting and Ian’s looking up at him with his stupid fucking eyes and Mickey’s rock hard in his pants, his clothes are off in record time.

The quality of the sex is unprecedented. The best Mickey’s had before Ian was with a guy in a bathroom stall at the arcade and that was only ‘cause his dick was nearly eight inches long. He guesses that Ian’s is easily an inch bigger than that and it’s all Mickey can do not to sob into the pillow when it presses into him for the first time. Ian’s thrusts are deep and rough and fast and his hands are stroking up and down his chest and touching him in places and ways Mickey’s not entirely sure he’s okay with, but it feels so good that Mickey feels like he’s going to shatter from the pleasure and he lets it happen anyway.

It’s over far more quickly than he wants it to be, but they get a good fifteen minutes of fucking in before Mickey’s spilling himself over his bed sheets and Ian’s grunting against the back of his neck and gasping through his orgasm. Mickey’s barely rolled over onto his back after Ian pulls out and settles down breathlessly next to him when his father trudges through the room and Mickey feels like time has just stopped completely.

He can’t believe his luck when Terry leaves without a single punch thrown or bullet fired and his head slumps down against the pillow in stunned relief. When Ian tries to kiss him after he tosses the gun onto the bed a few minutes later, he threatens to rip his tongue out of his head and it seems like that’s that.

But Mickey can’t get Ian’s stupid red hair or his massive dick or the taste of his spunk out of his mind, and he reasons that there’s a good chance he won’t get fucked like that again by anybody else and Ian’s only a few streets or a short L ride away most of the time. So before long, he finds himself in the Kash n’ Grab dropping stupid innuendos and getting fucked in a freezing cold store room on a fairly regular basis and getting sucked off in his room as his sister makes them pizza bagels next door.

It’s not just Ian’s touch that drives him crazy. He’s long past feeling like he has to bat his hands away when they gently stroke his chest or his hips or his thighs and now he’s actually touching him back; it started when Ian blew him that time when Mandy was in the kitchen. Mickey had run his hands through his ginger hair when Ian had glanced up at him approvingly. Mickey had responded by fisting his hand in it and suddenly thrusting his hips forward in a last grasp for control, trying to make him gag even more and failing. Ian had simply smiled awkwardly and Mickey felt his last tendril of self-preservation slip away from him.

Now he just leans into it and lets it happen, because fuck if it doesn’t feel good and Mickey’s so starved of that kind of affection that he feels like he’d fucking purr if he was a cat.  

*

Ian upset is not something he ever expected to see. Lenience in his allowance of physical affection during sex aside, he thinks he’s been doing a fairly good job of making sure this thing between them stays platonic at most, so he’s got no idea why Ian thinks he’d know how to deal with whatever shit’s going on with him. Unless he needs help giving someone a beat-down and _then_ maybe Mickey would help him out, but something tells him it’s nothing like that. His dad’s yelling something about laundry on the pull-up bar and he’s fairly certain he’s going to end up with a black eye if he doesn’t do something about it, but he feels like something is going to tear inside him if he does what he really ought to do and tell Ian to fuck off. Instead, he tells him he’ll meet him in twenty and goes back inside.  

As he turns his back and leans against the door, he closes his eyes and swears under his breath.

He’s got it bad for Ian Gallagher already and he’s not even been fucking him for more than a month.

When he gets there, he knocks on the door and almost immediately Ian unlocks it and pulls him inside. He starts babbling something about ‘Monica being back’ but Mickey tells him to shut up and drop his pants as soon as they’re in the store room, and Mickey’s dropping to his knees and the frantic look on Ian’s face is slowly slipping away.

He’s in the middle of one of the best fucks of his life and wondering whether it’s worth getting Ian upset more often just so that he’ll bang him like this when Ian’s hands cover his own. He immediately thinks to pull his hand away but truth be told, it feels kind of nice and it makes some of the fear and frustration of his day dissipate and anyway, his legs are quaking so much that he’s afraid he’ll make a dick out of himself and topple over if he lets go. Ian’s face is rubbing against the back of his neck and Mickey’s skin is damp with sweat and the moisture of Ian’s breath, and he’s getting closer and closer to the edge with every harsh stab at his sweet spot.

He’s almost there when Ian stops and the door clicks open to reveal Kash n’ Grab himself standing there and staring at them. He’s out of there before he even has a chance to button up his pants because fuck if he’s going to stay there for that conversation.

He ends up in an alley a few blocks down the street and pacing around like a caged animal, his body still singing and shuddering from stimulation. His heart rate feels alarmingly fast; from trying to keep away from his violent father most of the day to fucking Ian in the store room and feeling his hand wrap around his to getting caught by Ian’s boyfriend, Mickey’s surprised he hasn’t had a heart attack yet.

Now he has to worry about Towelhead trying to get revenge or some shit and running his mouth all over the South Side about how he caught Mickey getting fucked in the ass. Mickey runs a hand through his hair and takes a few deep breaths, wipes the sweat from his brow and tries to calm the fuck down. It’s time for some damage control.

Of course, ‘damage control’ means different things to different people, and to Mickey it means being an aggravating little shit and making thinly-disguised threats to someone who could quite literally get him killed. All's fair in love and war and all that shit. The last thing he expects when he turns his back is a bullet whistling past him and exploding as it hits the shelves on the far wall, and two shots later he’s got a bullet in his leg and Ian is fussing over him frantically.

Ian’s hand on the back of his head makes him feel a lot better than it should considering he’s literally just been shot.

*

Juvie’s not too bad. The guys are assholes and the guards are cunts, but he finds his way pretty easily – being raised in the Milkovich house apparently did a pretty good job of preparing you for prison. It was just as well, really. His leg is healing pretty well too, though the crutches are a bitch to walk with.

He’s surprised to learn that it wasn’t Ian’s money that had appeared in his commissary account but Kash’s – after Ian had scared him with the threat of Mickey pressing charges. Which isn’t going to happen, but he can’t help but smile a little anyway. Ian isn’t as sweet as he looks; it's a quality that Mickey’s finding himself increasingly enamoured with. When Ian says he misses him, he makes sure to bring them back to reality and threatens him not to say it again, but Ian just smiles at him and there's a weird feeling that someone's just broken into him. Strangely though, it doesn't bother him that much.

Truthfully, Mickey’s cautiously happy that someone gives a shit about him on the outside. It’s a weird feeling, being cared about; it makes him feel weird and fuzzy on the inside and it almost, but not quite, absorbs the part of him that attacks him for letting some red-haired queer make him weak like this. He wouldn’t even be in juvie if it wasn’t for Ian. Mandy occasionally looks out for him but it’s still not something he’s used to. He’s not totally comfortable with it – he’s used to taking what he can get and learning to be happy with it, but he’s never been in a situation where someone is actively trying to take care of him emotionally.

He smiles, just barely, and meets Ian’s stupid, besotted gaze on the other side of the glass before telling him to take his hand off the glass.

Yeah, Mickey’s a dead man walking, but he’s been one for most of his life, and Ian Gallagher’s presence in his life wasn’t going to change a thing.


End file.
